


Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood

by chailover



Series: You can light up the dark [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-05
Updated: 2018-07-05
Packaged: 2019-06-05 12:00:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15170303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chailover/pseuds/chailover
Summary: The night of the Kyuubi attack, two women - twomothers- made their choices...and in doing so, changed all the things to come.





	Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood

**Author's Note:**

> Title from a line in Sonnet LXVI by Pablo Neruda.

**

“Come with me, and we’ll bring forth a world without pain, without suffering,” he said, Sharingan gleaming red through the hole of his flame mask. “You will be with your beloved husband, your best friend, again. Isn’t that what you want?”

Uchiha Mikoto tightened her arms around the still-warm body of her most important person, her eyes burning with bloody tears. The fact that the Kyuubi was still rampaging in the distance meant that she didn’t even have to check to know that Kushina was dead or dying as well. 

Five years ago, she would’ve listened. Five years ago, Fugaku and Kushina were her whole world. The Uchiha curse ran strong in all of them, even her. Even warned of the clan’s curse of hatred (because love eventually turned. Oh, it always turned), she couldn’t help herself. She would have burned the world down just to see them again, to hold them in her arms.

But that was five years ago.

Now she had a little boy, old and wise beyond his time, and a baby who was still innocent to the curse of the clan. Her precious sons, what would they do if she goes as well? Itachi would protect Sasuke with everything he had, she knew, but it was not his duty to be mother and father as well as brother. The weight of that, along with the obligation to the clan, would grind out the very last bits of innocence he still had, the last vestiges remaining after knowing war from the time he could crawl. And Sasuke...Sasuke was their hope, Itachi’s as much as hers and Fugaku’s.

Her eyes burned with tears, her vision washing red. Fugaku’s face was peaceful after she gently closed his eyes. She looked up at the masked Uchiha, backlit by the full moon even as Kyuubi howled his rage and the earth trembled. “...I want to see them,” she murmured, and even as the masked man seemed to draw himself up in triumph, she continued. “I want to see them in the Pure Lands, able to greet them with a smile and hold my head up high,” she gathered her chakra and felt a surge of pain in her eyes, in her head. She ignored it and focused on the traitor, feeling the edges of her vision blur with blackness. “After I send you to Hell!”

It wasn’t unconsciousness fringing on her vision, but ink-black flames. 

“Amaterasu!”

**

Uzumaki Kushina had always known - her Minato was the sweetest, most considerate man alive, but sometimes he could be a complete and utter idiot.

“No.” She said firmly, and even through the impending death heralded by excruciating pain - the aftermath of childbirth and having the Nine-Tails forcefully extracted - his shocked expression made her smile.

“But Kushina,” he protested, face gray and grim. “It’s the only way.”

“It’s _not_ ,” Kushina replied, “I will not accept that the only way to save the village is to seal the Nine-Tails in our newborn and then make him an orphan. Find another way, or _I_ will.”

“That masked man will be back. The village will need the Nine-Tails for what comes.”

There was a nudge against her barrier, a familiar chakra at the edge of her awareness, and Kushina fought through the pain to create an opening. This would be her solution then, because she meant what she said to her husband - she would not bring Naruto into the world and then abandon him. “Then split the Nine-Tails and seal half of it in him, half in me.”

“The Death God will need a sacrifice.” Minato argued, “And you don’t have enough chakra to hold back the Nine-Tails for the split, do the summon and then seal.”

The Kyuubi roared and Kushina’s world whited out for a second with the effort of holding onto her chains, keeping the beast restrained. One giant claw stabbed deep into the ground next to them, gouging out a bloody furrow of mud and dirt. Naruto started wailing.

Once she caught her breath, a familiar voice, creaking with age, reached her ears. The Third Hokage blurred into view in full combat gear, “I believe I can help with that.”

**

After the storm and the fury, after the split and the sealing and the sacrifice to the Death God, he was left with two slowly cooling corpses and a newborn that wailed and screamed to match the anguish he was currently feeling. 

Their words echoed in his mind, etched in his memory. The Third, looking every moment of his full age with the full weight of all that he had lived in his eyes. _I am old, my wife is dead and my children are grown. I’ve made many mistakes and my time has passed - let me take your place instead of lingering on, so that you can guide your son and the next generation._

His beautiful, indomitable Kushina, the love of his life, the mother to his son - their brave, implacable, uncompromising defender. Minato hoped that someday, when Naruto reached the point of mastering the Kyuubi’s chakra, that he would finally meet the last bit of Kushina left in the world within his seal, so that he can really know his mother. But in the meantime, Minato knew that he would tell his son everything about her, so that neither of them would forget.

_...And I’ve taken too much time, sorry, Minato_ , she had said with a smile, through her tears and blood. _...but those are my words to him as his mother. Make sure he knows, okay?_ She had gripped his hand so tightly that he could feel his bones creak. _Tell him I love him every day, okay?_

He held Naruto tight to his chest, head bowed so that the child took up the entirety of his vision - a pointless move since everything was blurred with tears. Distantly, he could feel others approaching, faint points of chakra at the edge of his perception. Later, there will be a village to rebuild, comrades and family to mourn, and plans to be made. But for now…

“It’s okay, Naruto,” he said soothingly, his voice only wavering a little. “It’s okay, I’m here. Everything will be alright.”

**

She woke to a white tiled ceiling, the gentle sound of monitors beeping, and familiar voices. One was soft, obviously hushed for her sake, the other high and squeaky but amazingly quiet, considering.

“Yes, mother is just sleeping,” Itachi was saying to Sasuke’s gurgles, sitting on one of the chairs for visitors pulled up next to her bed, his feet didn’t even touch the floor. “I promised that we’d be quiet so they’d let us stay. Once she wakes, we can all go home.”

“...Itachi?” she murmured, and her little boy looked up from his brother, black eyes widening. He had on the slightly ridiculous looking sling with Sasuke swaddled in it, and the sight made her chest tight. Before she was even conscious of it, she had held out her arm and he had scrambled up, Sasuke and all, climbing directly from the chair to her bed. Sasuke made an unhappy grunt when he was squished between the two of them, but Mikoto was too overwhelmed to care, too relieved that her sons were all right as she hugged them tight.

“I’m glad you’re alright,” Itachi finally said when she let them go. Sasuke was starting to fuss, but subsided when Itachi hushed him. Mikoto could see now that her little boy was in her arms that he was disheveled and tired-looking, and his eyes were slightly red. Whether that was worry over her or someone had already told him about Fugaku, she didn’t know, but she knew she probably looked just as bad.

“Me too,” she said, voice thick, cupping the side of his face in the palm of her hand. “Me too.”

The attack of the Nine-tails might have taken her husband and her best friend, but it didn’t take everything. 

“Let’s go home.”

**

_I’ll see you later, Kushina_ , he promised. In his mind, she gave him her usual sunshine grin.

_Sure, pretty boy_ , she teased. _But not too soon, okay?_

**

**Author's Note:**

> The start of this whole AU and part of it really was written for NaNo last year. My feelings on the pile of shit that canon (and Naruto's parents, however awesome they are as characters) left Naruto might be showing just a tad here...


End file.
